Organizing Women in the Spaces between Home, Work and Community

Yates, Charlotte

doi:10.7202/1007635ar

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…For more than three decades, feminist analyses have suggested that IR institutions have an unequal, gendered character that is too limited to address the concerns of women (Charlesworth & Macdonald, ; Colling & Dickens, ; Forrest, ; Pocock, ; Wajcman, ; Zeitlin & Whitehouse, ). A number of analyses have focused on unions as gendered organizations (Briskin, ; Healy & Kirton, ; Parker & Foley, ; Yates, ), others have focused on employers as major forces in maintaining low wages, truncated career ladders and a preponderance of part‐time employment for women (Charlesworth & Macdonald, ; Edwards, ; Rubery & Fagan, ). It has also been argued that state IR policy reproduces gender inequity (Armstrong, ; Fudge, ; Vosko, ), prompting arguments for a comprehensive rethinking of IR from a gender perspective (Hansen, 2002, p. 190; Pocock, ; Wajcman, ; Zeitlin & Whitehouse, ).…”

Section: Literature and Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

Baines

Armstrong

2018

Gender Work & Organization

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This article explores the operation of gender and industrial relations in long-term care work or nursing home work, 'from within' the experience of the predominantly female workforce in seven unionized facilities in Canada. Drawing on qualitative case study data in non-profit facilities, the article argues that the main industrial relations challenges facing long-term care workers are that their workplace priorities do not fit within existing, gendered, industrial relations processes and institutions. This article starts from the experience of women and threads this experience through other layers of social organization such as: global and local policy directions including austerity, New Public Management, and social and healthcare funding; industrial relations mechanisms and policy; and workers' formal [union] and informal efforts to represent their interests in the workplace. The strongest themes in the reported experience of the women include: manufacturing conditions for unpaid work; increasing management and state dependence on unpaid care work; fostering loose boundaries; and limiting respect and autonomy as aspects of care work. The article extends the feminist political economy by analysing the links between the policies noted above and frontline care work. Building on gendered organizational theory the article also introduces the concept of non-job work and suggests a fourth industrial relations institution, namely the needs and gendered expectations of residents, families and workers themselves, operating within the liminal spaces in care work.KEYWORDS industrial relations institutions, gender, managerialism, long-term care work, unpaid work ) and in the social processes of power and injustice they reproduce and legitimize (Simms, 2007;Wajcman, 2000). To remedy this limitation, Forrest (1993, p. 417) suggests that the solution lies in understanding IR and the work women find themselves in 'from within' the experience of women.This article explores the operation of gender and IR in a highly gendered sector of work 'from within' the experience of women, namely work in long-term residential care (LTRC) or what are often called nursing homes. Like other wealthy, industrial countries, since the 1980s Canadian governments have adopted neoliberal policies that cut back entitlements, privatized services and valorized the private market as the solution to all social and individual problems (Cohen, 2013). Similar to many industrialized countries, LTRC is a mix of private, non-profit and public provision. The LTRC work explored in this article is undertaken by an overwhelmingly female labour force (over 80 per cent) where the majority of the labour force is unionized (around 65 per cent; Laxer, 2015) and operates within the increasingly constrained conditions of state-led austerity and late neoliberalism. Overall, Canadian union density hovers around 30 per cent in contrast to~18 per cent in the UK or Australia (OECD, 2017). The higher density is thought to reflect a larger and significantly female public sector...

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Section: Literature and Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

Baines

Armstrong

2018

Gender Work & Organization

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“…The rules and regulations covered in this analysis set the conditions for gendered, work/private arrangements, which in turn set the boundaries of what is and is not considered a union issue and therefore what is included in collective agreements. Yates (2011) identifies one of the pitfalls of the gender-spatial argument; it fails to account for the diverse experiences of all workers and families. Although most of the mobile workers in this case are men who are part of families with dependents not all women do care work the same way for dependents.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worker Movement as a Union Issue: An Examination of Collective Bargaining Agreements in the Construction Sector in Alberta, Canada

Cake

2016

Can. J. Soc.

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The fluctuating expansion of oil sands development in northern Alberta, Canada has led to employers hiring a large number of mobile workers. The working conditions for some of these mobile workers are modulated in part by unions through their role in negotiating collective bargaining agreements. Using a social reproductive framework, this study has two main findings: through collective agreements mobile workers are treated as a distinct category of worker, and there is a simultaneous expansion of workplace rules and regulations alongside a divide of the workplace from the home. The resulting expansion of the union regulated space in contrast to the divide of workplace from the home challenges union revitalization efforts, while also reaffirming traditional gendered experiences of mobility.

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“…Between the 1950s and 1990s, when Fordist work practices and organization were widespread, unions often took for granted the grouping together of workers into single large workplaces and overlooked the basis for workplace or occupational community. This was facilitated by the tendency for unions to organize and represent workforces whose demographic composition was similar to the union and their leaders (Yates 2011), such that maleness and whiteness became the unwritten codes of union collective identities (Leach 2012).…”

Section: Mobility Community Union Renewalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Workers on the move: can unions keep up to changes in community?

Leach

Yates

2015

Labour & Industry: a journal of the social and economic rel

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The radical restructuring of contemporary labor markets, combined with the weakening of welfare states, has extended and deepened the commodification of labor and the experience of risk and insecurity at work. In the face of increasingly uncertain hours of work, or confronted with layoff or unemployment, people become more mobile. This can take the form of searching for work further afield, or moving house to reduce costs. Mobility therefore becomes a strategy for mitigating risk, albeit shaped by class, race, and gender. We argue that such mobility shifts how workers imagine and live in their communities, stressing and stretching their key social relationships across space, while at the same time diminishing peoples' capacity for solidarity. We go on to argue that as workers respond to labor market pressures with increased mobility, the correspondence between community and workplace, workplace and residence is further eroded. This poses new challenges for the constitution of community, and solidarity, amongst workers, and ultimately for the capacity of unions to represent workers. Based on interviews with workers, we develop three themes from these interviews: the strains introduced to workers' sense of place and community by different forms of mobility; the gendered nature of mobility; and race, immigrant status, and mobility. In the final section of the essay, we discuss how some workers resist the isolating and demobilizing effects of workplace and work reorganization by constituting or reconstituting a sense of community. We then conclude with some reflections on how increased mobility and declining community cohesion impact union strategic capacities.

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Organizing Women in the Spaces between Home, Work and Community

Cited by 15 publications

References 22 publications

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

Worker Movement as a Union Issue: An Examination of Collective Bargaining Agreements in the Construction Sector in Alberta, Canada

Workers on the move: can unions keep up to changes in community?

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